


Maybe if the stars align

by Smoakin_dontburnyourself



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Angst, F/M, Force Bond (Star Wars), Hurt/Comfort, POV Alternating, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-02-02
Updated: 2018-02-24
Packaged: 2019-03-08 04:41:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,181
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13450773
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Smoakin_dontburnyourself/pseuds/Smoakin_dontburnyourself
Summary: “So alone… so desperate to know , you wanted, so badly, to turn me, find your place, a hero of the light--- and now, you want nothing from me, nothing, only everything ”.The force keeps them together, even when everything else wants to tear them apart.





	1. only everything.

**Author's Note:**

> So I re-worked this to accommodate something like a plot, leave me your thoughts!

His room is dark and quiet by the time he feels that same tug in his mind that pulls them together.It's a stillness that burns at his lungs, courses through his veins. There's a familiar tingle that runs up his spine-- and then she’s there, materialized across space, framed only by the blankness of his empty room. 

 

She’s frozen for a moment, caught by the same sensation, before she braces herself with a shallow sigh. He doesn’t have to look at her to see the tension that lives on her shoulders---he can feel it, how it makes the air around them heavy. 

 

“You can’t sleep” she says and when he casts a brief look in her direction, her eyes are wide as if she hadn’t meant to say that out loud. She edges back, screws her mouth closed with an almost palpable amount of effort, sets her jaw in frustration. She looks like she thinks she overstepped, and she did. He  _ knows _ he can’t sleep, he doesn’t need his intruder to remind him. 

_ How very perceptive of you _ , he wants to say, can feel his irritation swelling like a fire fanned by her presence. He looks at her, opens his mouth to snap--- yet, when Rey looks back at him, it's Kylo Ren who turns away. It isn’t fear on her face, her eyes are bright and her jaw is still set. He could mistake it for simple animosity, perhaps, except he  _ knows _ that look in her eye. No, it isn’t fear on her face. Its resolve. It’s  _ I’ll hurt you if I have to _ , she says it without speaking, just by existing, each time they’re brought together, with every single inch of her.

 

_ If she has to _ . There, fists clenched against her side, she looks like she  _ wants to _ . 

 

Still, she doesn’t, and then it’s quiet again, deafeningly so. But he expects that much, the silence. Each time they’re thrust together there's more of it, silence. Perhaps they think the force will bore of them, decide to toy with something more interesting. It never does and then there's only quiet, long lulls of wordless breaths and the strange feeling of unwanted company. 

 

“No” Kylo Ren says, answering her observation from before “I  _ can’t _ ”  

 

He can’t really bring himself to say more, not when he knows how empty words can be; not when he knows she’s _ there  _ and nothing he does will make her disappear. It’s strange--- feeling powerless and mostly, it leaves a bitter taste in his mouth. 

 

It's always harder at night, to fight against whatever wants them together. Her exhaustion lingers, stronger even than her disdain for him, seeping into the crevices of his empty room. It’s a temporary lapse in sanity, late into the night, when whatever vision of her slides into the empty side of his bed, resignation and exhaustion spilling from her consciousness. It’s a cease-fire of sorts, minds and bodies fuzzed with fatigue-- much too tired to kick and scream against the mysteries of their connection.

 

It's not the first time they’re together like this, late at night, confined to one bed, unable to disappear. Each time it feels more familiar, like theres no universe where they’re not exactly here this way. It’d be fascinating, almost, if it didn’t make him want to implode.  

 

The first time had been days into his command as Supreme Leader, reeling from rejection and failure---reckless, only half human, itching for violence. The promise of it had come much too easily, in the form of a system wide disobedience against the First Order. Rumors of Snoke’s death had spread like wildfire, like a virus infecting planets with hope, with resistance. 

 

Kylo Ren had found himself aboard the  _ Finalizer _ , seething and faceless behind a helmet welded to inspire fear, submission: the new face of the First Order. Cloaked in black and hell-bent on taking care of it himself, he’d waited, landed, descended. His hands, gloved in cold leather, had begged for the weight of his weapon, implored him to  _ move _ . He had crackled with some kind of restless energy, coiled, ready to snap, knowing what would happen, eager for the mess he’d make when he finally did. 

 

What happened then, though, was an ambush---there, on some outer-rim planet, they’d been  _ ambushed _

 

“Ren!” the General had forgotten himself, calling out to him by his name, not his title, amidst the cacophony of battle, retreating, falling back aboard the Star Destroyer. Running, like a coward, withdrawing their troops, like a strategist. The battle was no longer worth the casualties, that much had been clear, they weren’t prepared, were foolish to come this way, brazen and rash under his command. 

 

Later, Hux would turn up his nose, deem it an ill timed tantrum, call him a  _ boy _ within his own mind. But there, in the thick molasses of violence, Kylo Ren had been an animal---faceless, detached, bloodthirsty, outnumbered, feeling the power of the darkness surge in his veins through the points of entry where his skin had been slashed or shot open. Drinking from the bubbling black pool of rage in his own mind, Kylo Ren had remained upright, swaying with the force, wound tight with the power caged within his own pain. Stormtroopers had turned that day. Some had scurried off amidst the chaos of a lost fight, inspired, no doubt, in the departure and subsequent  _ heroism _ of FN-2187. Others had stayed and tried their hand at killing him. Those had been foolish, those had been cut down without a second thought.

 

Still, he’d been outnumbered, shielding blasts, blocking arrows, fending off pikes. Some had carved through his shield, through his skin. Pain had been mundane, shooting up his spine,settling as a dull ache in the base of his skull. He had clenched his teeth against it, roared and shattered through every remaining ounce of control that held him back. 

 

She appeared to him only once he had plowed through every single would-be rebel or deserter. When death and the shock of it all had begun to dissipate into the atmosphere. She hadn’t been able to see his surroundings, only him--- he knows now what he must have looked like, feral, unhinged, tattered. His cloak had been wet from his own injuries and by the aftershocks of a massacre. She’d watched in horror as he fell to his knees, clutching the right plane of his abdomen where a blaster shot oozed out blood in a slow and steady stream of heat.

 

He had sputtered behind the mask, blood, nearly choking on it.

 

_ Go! Leave! _ he had wanted to say--didn't-- was weak enough by the time of her apparition, gurgled again, swallowing the metal taste of his injury 

 

Hux couldn’t be too far off, he could still hear the faint humm of the ships presence in the planet’s atmosphere. He had stumbled to his feet with very little grace, clawing at his wounds like a castaway plugging holes in a sinking vessel. His ribs ached and his shoulder stung, though neither provoked him more than her steady eyes, which remained trained on him even after taking his first couple staggered steps. 

 

“You’re bleeding half to death” it hadn’t meant much to him, half-dead was still half-alive 

 

“Clever of you to notice” he had sneered, borrowing bitterness from somewhere less broken

 

“You’ll die here” perhaps it had been true, though they would really never know for sure---Because then she was there, at his side,  _ helping him _ . 

 

He had felt a surge of something at her touch, an energy crackling across his synapses, jolting him so viceraly that it had made his teeth rattle. The bond had been stronger by her own intent, by the power of will that surged through whatever string tied them together

 

“That mask is as repulsing as the last one” Rey had said, a joke perhaps, under her breath. 

 

He’d made it back on board the  _ Finalizer _ with her under his uninjured shoulder like a crutch.

 

The wounds hadn’t been fatal, though that had been the extent of their merit.  

 

She had been there when he awoke from a turbulent kind of sleep, hissing from pain, aggravating the wound on his side from the jolt. She had sat there, at his bedside and somewhere else entirely all at once, trying not to stare, failing, mostly. 

 

“They’ll only be scars, one day” he had said, not sure why, giving into some need to dispel her horror at his tarnished skin. She had said nothing at that, had only trained her gaze away, speaking only after he was sure the silence would drown him

 

“You saved my life once, too” she had said. He’d imagined it as a kind of explanation, a rationalization for her own sake. Helping him was, after all, the antithesis of what she stood for. 

 

Still, it was technically true, he’d killed Snoke, even if he let the first order believe it had been her. 

 

He had grunted against the pain, sitting up despite the protests of his battered body “Ah, so we’re even now” he said through his teeth “You owe me nothing now, is that it?” 

 

“I  _ never  _ owed you  _ anything _ ” she had said, fire ignited, voice crackling at his insinuation

 

“Next time you find me on my knees, you’ll, what? Finish what you started in the forest that day? When you called me a monster, when you could have slaughtered me, but  _ didn’t _ ?”

 

Her eyes had been wide with disbelief, with anger, with something else 

 

“If you wanted me dead, you would have killed me then or before you scurried back to your band of traitors” he had continued, relentless “No” he had said, “That's not what you want-” 

 

“Don’t tell me what I want! you know  _ nothing  _ about me” 

 

“Don’t I?” he had asked, eyeing her outburst with a mask of indifference. His voice had turned cold then, accusing “You strengthened this connection, fed it what it needed to grow.  _ You _ , a scavenger from nowhere, no training, no knowledge of the force--without imagining, even, what you would unleash” he had laughed then, hard and jagged “So alone… so desperate to  _ know _ , you wanted, so badly, to turn me, find your place, a hero of the light--- and now, you want nothing from me, nothing, only  _ everything _ ” 

 

The force had kept them together that night, as it does now. 

 

He sleeps, or at least, he tries, feels the echo of her heat beside him. 

 

He’s lost, at last, into the void of unconsciousness, gone until the morning washes over him like a bucket of cold water.

 

Kylo Ren wakes, pulled from sleep, caught between the teeth of the same dream 

 

_ Rey will meet him on the battlefield, Rey will take all he has left _

 

She’s gone, but he expects that much. She’s gone, but still a piece of her lingers. 


	2. Discoloration

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rey searches herself and finds him in the process

Rey wakes with a sudden jolt and a small muffled gasp that’s lost into the stillness.

 

She opens her eyes---there’s nothing to see, nothing but the same cloudy vision that seems to bounce around behind the thin gloss of her eyes like a frantic beam of light caught by the darkness. She reaches out, tries to catch it, curious, always, despite knowing better. It vibrates there for a moment, colors and distorted silhouettes, dangling something that it doesn’t deem her worthy of seeing in its entirety. It brushes her fingertips, the sound of violence, the ring of inevitability--- but then It's gone before she can touch it, blinked away in a blur, leaving behind only the quiet something that’s always buzzing just beneath her skin.

 

The buzz intensifies as she feels his consciousness wake from somewhere distant, a point of light somewhere deep within her awareness--- but that's not unusual. She’s aware of him, always, even if she wishes not to be.

 

It tingles up her spine then, the familiar call to him and Rey grits her teeth against it, against the faint pull that wants to bring them together. He must do the same because then nothing blurs and her bones don’t shake and he doesn’t appear. The force is lazy this early in the morning, kind even, allowing them to wipe the sleep from their eyes in a relative sort of peace. Rey is grateful for the solitude she’s granted, even if she knows it to be a transient, fleeting thing.

 

Still, she wakes, dresses, doesn’t mark the wall with the passing of time, reminds herself that she doesn’t need to do that anymore---sometimes it's hard to forget. Instead, she drifts away from the sounds of the resistance base roaring to life. She finds an isolated spot and sits, legs crossed, eyes closed, searching herself for _something_. She could deem it meditation, though her days with master Luke were too few for her to call it that completely. It’s self-soothing, it’s searching for answers, it’s hiding herself away from the bright eyes of her friends who wouldn’t understand why her gaze wells up with a bubbling anger that is not her own. It’s a mixture of all those things, some days more of one than the other.

 

Today her focus is blurry. She thinks of dark haunted eyes, black with the void of whatever is missing from them. She wonders, not for the first time, what exactly they’re looking for.

 

She never comes up with a resolution that doesn’t terrify her and this time is no different. Darkness--- _he wants it to consume her_ . Perhaps it’s the viability that frightens her, how easy it would be to allow the bubbling pool of rage to devour her, to drown her under its ugly rotten pulse. _Easy_ \--- she’s not well acquainted with the idea. _Easy_ , how would it feel? She never stays long enough to know, terrified, mostly, of what It might taste like.

 

It lives on though, the darkness, despite how fast she tries to run from it. Darker even, and deeper---as if it’d been a piece of her all along. Rey imagines herself on Jakku, remembers the life she’d had there and she can’t imagine any of this had been a part of her then. Out there she’d been no one, just a foolish girl waiting for parents that would never come, scavenging in the punishing heat--- thirsty and lonely but far away from all of this--- from the intergalactic war, from the Jedis and the First Order and from Kylo Ren and whatever version of him seems to be at every turn she takes.

 

She reaches for it, though she knows she shouldn’t. Maybe this is what easy feels like, _my parents are coming back_ ,

 

she can replace this pain with another, with a dull ache that stings of abandonment.  She can stay in the safety of her isolation because _my parents are coming back_ ,

 

but her mind doesn’t let her get too far. It rejects the thought now, like a body fighting off an incompatible organ.

 

Rey sighs, chained to reality, and takes a deep breath that brings her back to the nothingness of a clear mind.

 

Though she hadn’t known it for long, Rey misses the moisture laced breeze of the water, the sound of waves crashing together, the smell of ocean and the taste of salt in the air. She thinks of it idly now and allows herself to drift.  

   

There is no anger today echoing in the distance. It’s a strange feeling, a break from routine, though welcomed, nonetheless. Her blood doesn’t boil with rage and her eyes don’t sting with pain--- instead, Rey allows herself to bask in the stillness.

 

The heat of the planet sizzles around her but the fever is nothing if not familiar.

 

Her mind is thoughtless, unaware, unguarded enough that she doesn’t sense him approaching until every piece of her is encompassed by a corresponding piece of him--- she’s surrounded suddenly and they fit like shards joined together to make something a little less broken. It's still sharp, the combination of them two, and she lets it cut her, if only to catch a small glimpse.  

 

Rey feels him, not as a steady buzz now, but as a roaring pulse that pounds at her ears and thrums as energy through the air that surrounds her. There is no breeze to relieve her sweat matted hair from sticking to her face, there is only heat and there is only him.

 

It doesn’t face her, the looming entity of his awareness, and for a moment, she thinks that perhaps it hasn’t seen her. She can leave, run, escape from the intrusions that are harder and harder to ignore each time they come, each time they reveal just a little bit more.

 

Yes, she can get away, she just has to---

 

But then

 

‘ _Are you doing this?_ ’ it’s not a sound but she feels the words surround her

 

She’s frozen as it regards her and she can’t really see. Not him, at least, not as he wants to be seen--- just as he is.

 

“No” she says, barely a breath mingled with speech, said to no one.

 

Her eyes are still closed and she sits with her legs crossed. Her elbows dig into her knees as she leans forward into the sensation of him. She reaches out with her mind to grasp at whatever hangs between them, feels as he does the same, looking, feeling, testing the tautness of the tightrope that they walk.

 

For a long time there is silence, the sound of what she thinks must be his slow and steady breathing, the loudness of pulling herself closer to him, impossibly so---close enough that he might have swallowed her whole. So near that she might be inside, lost in some crater of his mind. She meets something there. Something tormented, something that welcomes her further. _Let me see,_ she nearly begs him, _Let me see_ , she wants to know what lives inside the fortress he’s built for himself. The gates crack, only a fraction. Rey gets a glimpse of something cold, conflicted, something that hisses at her like a wounded animal, something that looks at her and begs her for a piece of herself. She wants to see more, thinks that she might---

 

But then there's only darkness. A pool of black that reflects her in a terrible way, like a mirror, and she sees herself at the heart of it, in its depths. The walls of his consciousness are rotting and it’s the smell of decay that assaults her then. It burns to the ground, he doesn't want her there, he wants her gone, _he’s afraid_.  

 

Rey is shaking with the aftershocks once she comes back to her own body, gasping for air, exposed skin slicked with a cold kind of sweat. There's a moment of respite before, with a tentative breath, she reaches out for him once more

 

‘ _Ben?_ ’ she doesn’t say it, barley thinks it but she knows he can hear

 

Still, there is no response, only splotches of discoloration and the same quiet buzzing under her skin.  


End file.
